Topic Description

Specific Challenge:

New and emerging markets outside Europe offer huge opportunities for the European industry. To compete effectively in these markets, European companies and especially SMEs need to develop partnerships with innovation players in these economies from early on and to develop receptiveness for local success. This is crucial to better understand the specific market context and the consequent needs and demands of emerging users and consumers. The end goal is to bring a new product, service or process to the foreign market, possibly through an innovative application of existing technologies, methodologies, or business processes.

Scope:

This action will enhance the evidence base for EU R&I policy through in-depth analyses of the outcomes, experiences and impacts of a critical number of viability assessment projects of innovative solutions for markets outside Europe.

The assessment projects will be selected following a series of open calls organised by the action. The proposal for undertaking the action should define the organisational process for selecting the assessment projects for which financial support will be granted, including the process of selecting, allocating and reporting on the use of independent experts and ensuring no conflicts of interest.

At least 80% of the EU funding shall be allocated to financial support for the third parties carrying out the selected assessment projects. The series of open calls shall address markets of developing countries, large emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China, Mexico) and developed countries with roughly the same allocation for each of these three country category.

The calls should specify that each assessment project should include a wide variety of activities to explore the practical, technological and commercial viability of an innovative solution in particular in terms of how it needs to meet local conditions and demands.

The proposal must clearly detail a fixed and exhaustive list of the different types of activities for which a third party may receive financial support such as market studies, partner search and networking, approaches for client/user involvement including societal, behavioural and cultural aspects, and other activities aimed at overcoming barriers for market introduction and uptake.

The proposal must clearly detail the criteria for awarding financial support and simple and comprehensive criteria for calculating the exact amount of such support, which may not exceed EUR 60 000 for each assessment project. The award criteria must be objective and non-discriminatory.

Each assessment project shall be led by an entity established in an EU Member State or Horizon 2020 Associated Country and shall involve at least one entity not established in an EU Member State or Horizon 2020 Associated Country. The proposal shall specify whether and how the latter would be funded according to its type of involvement (e.g. subcontractor, cooperation agreement) and its geographic origin (country automatically eligible for funding or not according to Horizon 2020 rules). Highly innovative SMEs with clear commercial ambitions and potential for high growth and internationalisation shall be targeted in particular.

The open calls must be published widely, including on the Horizon 2020 Participants Portal and through National Contact Points, and Horizon 2020 standards with respect to transparency, equal treatment, no conflict of interest and respect of confidentiality must be adhered to. The results of the calls must be published without delay, including, for each assessment project, a description of the project, the legal name and country of the third party, the start date and duration of the project, and the amount of the award.

The proposal should specify how it will promote the calls, how it will monitor and report on call results and how it will assess the quality of the outcomes and experiences from the assessment projects, as well as how it will provide regular in-depth analyses and which indicators will be used for measuring the impacts achieved. Analyses should draw up R&I policy conclusions on questions such as which additional joint R&I activities in third countries should be supported, what framework conditions for R&I cooperation need improving, and what further R&I support services should be implemented.

The Commission considers that a proposal requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 9 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of a proposal requesting another amount. The selected beneficiary or beneficiaries should have a solid operational and financial capacity.

Expected Impact:

- Economic growth and job creation, both in Europe and in the target countries, as well as additional societal and environmental benefits.

- Increased European economic and industrial competitiveness and excellence and participation in international value chains.

- Inclusion of locally developed and accepted technology and business models, including through co-creation with innovation players in the target countries.

- Greater availability, uptake and use of innovative solutions responding to the specific local needs and circumstances of the target countries and markets.

Topic conditions and documents

1. Eligible countries:described in Annex A of the Work Programme.
A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon 2020 projects. See the information in the Online Manual.

2. Eligibility and admissibility conditions: described in Annex B and Annex C of the Work Programme.

Proposal page limits and layout: please refer to Part B of the proposal template in the submission system below.

3. Evaluation:

Evaluation criteria, scoring and thresholds are described in Annex H of the Work Programme.

Submission and evaluation processes are described in the Online Manual.

4. Indicative time for evaluation and grant agreements:

Information on the outcome of evaluation (single-stage call): maximum 5 months from the deadline for submission.
Signature of grant agreements: maximum 8 months from the deadline for submission.

For grants awarded under this topic [GOVERNANCE-08-2018: Partnering for viability assessments of innovative solutions for markets outside Europe] beneficiaries will provide financial support to third parties as described in Part K of the General Annexes to the Work Programme. The support to third parties can only be provided in the form of grants. The respective options of Article 15.1 and Article 15.3 of the Model Grant Agreement will be applied

Members of consortium are required to conclude a consortium agreement, in principle prior to the signature of the grant agreement.

7. Open access must be granted to all scientific publications resulting from Horizon 2020 actions.

Where relevant, proposals should also provide information on how the participants will manage the research data generated and/or collected during the project, such as details on what types of data the project will generate, whether and how this data will be exploited or made accessible for verification and re-use, and how it will be curated and preserved.

Open access to research data
The Open Research Data Pilot has been extended to cover all Horizon 2020 topics for which the submission is opened on 26 July 2016 or later. Projects funded under this topic will therefore by default provide open access to the research data they generate, except if they decide to opt-out under the conditions described in Annex L of the Work Programme. Projects can opt-out at any stage, that is both before and after the grant signature.

Note that the evaluation phase proposals will not be evaluated more favourably because they plan to open or share their data, and will not be penalised for opting out.

Open research data sharing applies to the data needed to validate the results presented in scientific publications. Additionally, projects can choose to make other data available open access and need to describe their approach in a Data Management Plan.

Projects need to create a Data Management Plan (DMP), except if they opt-out of making their research data open access. A first version of the DMP must be provided as an early deliverable within six months of the project and should be updated during the project as appropriate. The Commission already provides guidance documents, including a template for DMPs. See the Online Manual.

Eligibility of costs: costs related to data management and data sharing are eligible for reimbursement during the project duration.

The legal requirements for projects participating in this pilot are in the article 29.3 of the Model Grant Agreement.

Partner Search

LEARs, Account Administrators or self-registrants can publish partner requests for open and forthcoming topics after logging into the Participant Portal.

Submission Service

To access the Electronic Submission Service of the topic, please select the type of action that is most relevant to your proposal from the list below and click on the 'Start Submission' button. You will then be asked to confirm your choice of the type of action and topic, as these cannot be changed in the submission system. Upon confirmation you will be linked to the correct entry point.

To access existing draft proposals for this topic, please login to the Participant Portal and select the My Proposals page of the My Area section.